Caught. Kristin Hardy
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the damned thing was almost impossible to open when you did have a key.
Too bad the conservators weren’t still there to let her in. If it hadn’t been for the telecon from hell, she’d have gotten down to the lab earlier. Instead, she stood juggling the amulet box and folder of photos while she fought with the lock. Then again, Paul Wingate and his staff of conservators were known for keeping eccentric hours. There was no guarantee they’d have been around. Temperamental? Sure. Eccentric? Yep. Skilled? Beyond all doubt. And when you were dealing with history, skilled won the day.
With a snick the lock turned. “Thank God,” Julia muttered and swung the ponderous door open into blackness. She’d extended a hand for the switch when she heard a faint metallic sound behind her. A quick glance at the deserted hall, gleaming with a soft gray luster, showed no one in sight. The hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Probably an echo from the stairwell around the corner, she told herself firmly. The hard marble walls magnified sounds, made them travel farther than they normally would. Security, she decided, flipping on the lights. Probably doing their rounds.
Fluorescent bulbs flickered to life, gleaming anachronistically in a workshop that was a blend of nineteenth-, twentieth-and twenty-first-century technologies. Heavy wooden tables, smoothed from years of use, sat side by side with white-metal-and-Plexiglas fume hoods more suitable for a chemistry lab. On one table, someone was laboriously reconstructing a terra-cotta statue of three stone figures sitting side by side. By the door, a stone sarcophagus lay on blocks, underneath the railed gantry that they’d used to hoist it; the actual mummy lay draped on a wheeled table nearby. A tank held some pottery recently acquired from a dig outside of Luxor, soaking in a bath of deionized water.
Nearby lay a section of an Egyptian bas-relief from the museum’s permanent collection. Flaking pigment, Julia saw. Setting down the wooden box and the folder absently, she walked forward to study the work. The conservation staff appeared to be laboriously reattaching the flaking pieces fragment by fragment.
Five minutes of it would have had Julia’s eyes crossing. The conservators, she decided, deserved to be as eccentric as they liked. After all, it wasn’t everyone who could—
She jolted, whipping her head around to stare at the door. A sound. She’d heard a definite, distinct sound that wasn’t just her imagination and wasn’t just far away. It was here, right outside, coming down the hall. Not a snick of metal, this time, but the quiet pad of footsteps.
Footsteps where no one should be. It wasn’t a guard—they jingled and clanked from a mile away. This was someone else, walking down a basement hallway in a museum, an hour after closing, at a time everyone should have been long since gone.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The Zander heist had been carried out by a master thief. And if her nervous visitors actually had somehow gotten the White Star from the thief and passed it along to the museum, well, that thief might just be looking for it.
And that thief might just be here.
Quietly, Julia slipped out of her heels and closed her hand around one of the heavy lead weights that sat on the table next to the bas-relief. Holding her breath, she stole forward.
Out in the hall, the footsteps halted before the door. For a moment, everything was so silent she could hear the pulse thudding in her ears. Then with a creak the doorknob shifted.
Her heart jumped into her mouth. Swiftly, she raised her weapon. The door opened—
And in stepped Alex.
3
Friday, 6:50 p.m.
THE BREATH EXPLODED out of her lungs.
“Jesus, what are you doing down here?” she demanded, knees weak.
He eyed the weight she held. “Clearly, taking my life in my hands.”
“It would have served you right if I’d brained you, you idiot. You scared me to death.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking the weight out of her hand and setting it on the nearest workbench, “you look pretty lively to me.”
She glared at him as he shut the door, willing her system to level, not wanting to admit the relief she felt. Not wanting to admit how good he looked. “How did you find me?” she asked instead.
He shrugged. “I went by your office and saw you walking out of the office wing. I figured I’d follow you.”
“No one’s supposed to be down here now.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m working.”
He made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Six fifty-four? You didn’t tell me you’d switched to swing shift.”
“It’s your fault.” She slipped her shoes back on and walked over to the entrance to the rare-books repository.
“My fault?”
“You brought those people in.” The modern door to the climate-controlled room opened with a little hiss of escaping air.
Alex fought a smile. “I take it the flea-market find turned out to be more exciting than you thought?”
“Possibly.”
“Where is it?”
Julia turned to point at the wooden box on the table by the bas-relief.
Alex ambled over. “I guess you can get high quality junk in Moroccan bazaars, if you’re a choosy shopper.” He picked up the box and cracked it open. “Why, I’ll bet that—” And then he just stared. “Good Lord,” he said slowly.
When his gaze met Julia’s, his eyes glowed green with wonder. The quick jolt of connection took her by surprise.
“What is this?” Alex gazed at the amulet, brushing a finger over it.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, but it sent a shiver through the pit of her stomach. She felt a vibration, as though it were making a sound at some frequency too low to be heard. She swallowed. “I don’t know what it is for sure. It could be nothing. It could be an antique forgery. Or it could be a three-or four-thousand-year-old amulet. Take your pick.”
He whistled. “Not bad for a flea market. So you came down here to poke around?”
“Exactly. Now, if you’ll just give me some privacy….”
“Not a chance.” He set the box aside. “Forget about the doodad for a minute. You said last night that we were going to talk, and that’s what we’re going to do. I think you owe me that, especially after the routine you pulled this morning.”
“There’s no need for it. Especially after this morning.” Julia stepped into the book repository. She just had to remember that it was time to break up with him and get her life in order, not time to fall back into bed with him, despite the little warm flare of arousal that had begun to radiate through her. This was nothing new, it was the same effect he always had on her.
It didn’t mean anything.
“I think we got things settled already,” she added, busying herself with the computer.
“Oh, I don’t think so at all,” Alex said easily, pushing the door back to follow her inside. “If you wanted to break up, then what was last night about?”
“Last night was a lapse.”
“A lapse? Is that what you call it when you put my—”
“A lapse,” she said firmly, struggling to push away the sudden vivid memory of straining naked against him. “It’s over with.”
“So you’ve said. I’d just like to be clear on why that is.” His voice was reasonable, his expression open.
Julia eyed him warily. She knew this Alex. This was the Alex who almost never